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Sold some games that I won't play and got Enemy Coast Ahead: The Doolittle Raid and I'm enjoying it. I'm learning the naval phase now:
Slimy Hog fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jan 1, 2024 |
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Jan 1, 2024 05:20
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Tekopo and myself sat down yesterday to try out Operation Mercury from the Grand Tactical Series. This is a Company-Scale treatment of WW2 with 500m hexes - currently there are 7 games in the series, all of which cover Wallies vs Germans (though the Italians make an appearance in No Question of Surrender, covering Bir Hakiem), the most famous being the first entry in the series - The Devil's Cauldron, covering the northern half of Operation Market Garden. The heart of the GTS system is its chit pull activation system, where most units can't do anything particularly interesting unless a formation chit is bought for with precious dispatch points. It is hard to maintain momentum as dispatch points are very hard to come by; most units in GTS Mercury would typically not get any DPs during a turn; DPs can be purchased with command points (abbreviated here as CoPs) but CoPs are also important for more reactive manuevers, and spending all your CoPs leaves your units vulnerable and your formations inflexible. This delicate balance makes GTS an interesting game about husbanding resources and maintaining a sustainable operational tempo. We're both newbies to the system, though did study the rules beforehand. For those on the discord, I have been waxing lyrical about the system after having played through the GTS Saar (The introductory game) and some beginner/intermediate scenarios of GTS Gold, Juno, Sword solo. We decided to tackle Mercury as it seemed managable, and (other than 1 "experience" of playing No Retreat Crete about a decade ago), this would be our first Crete game. Crete is an interesting situation - the Allies have massive numerical superiority, but their troops are poorly equipped; other than the British 14th Brigade at Heraklion the Allied forces on Crete had recently been evacuated from Greece. The evacuation had been partially succesful in that many of the troops got away, they left most of their heavy equipment behind, and units were landed in a haphazard manner. Bits of divisions or even individual battalions were landed on Crete while other brigades from the same division went all the way back to Egypt. The frontline allied strength comes mostly from the New Zealand 2nd Division, with a Brigade and a bit from the Australian 6th Division (and the aforementioned 14th Bde). Both these divisions are equipped and organised fairly similarly to other Commonwealth Divisions (thought the Kiwis have an extra Infantry Battalion - the 27th (Maori) Bn), though without the heavy firepower that the CW player would be used to if he/she had previosuly played Gold, Juno Sword (they left that back in Greece). The bulk of the allied steps, however, are a mix of rear echeclon troops, some untrained and poorly equipped Greeks, gunners without their guns fighting as infantry, and some miscalleneous crap lying around, including a few Whippet and Matilda tanks from the 3rd Hussars and 7th RTR. Importantly, the Allies also had a major intelligence advantage; the Luftwaffe were notoriously awful with their ciphers, and Bernard Freyberg, 2nd NZ Division commander, was passed a lot of these ULTRA intercepts and knew about the invasion. He however, mistook this to mean a seaborne invasion, so most of the Allied troops were deployed to confront a seaborne landing. On the other hand, the German Paras from 7 Fleiger Division, are initially heavily outnumbered and have a major qualitative advantage; they have better troop quality, better morale, and in general, better command and control ratings, which means they can do more with less troops. Ironically enough, they actually probably had better heavy equipment because they actually had some artillery. However, the Luftwaffe did put the Allies to shame with how bad their Crete airdrops were. A lot of the parachutists end up getting airdropped directly onto Allied troops; and German losses were horrifiic; so horrific in fact, that they never attempted another division-sized drop again. We agree to do Scenario 5 - Descent into Hell. This Covers the first two days of the German assault in the Maleme-Suda bay sector, and ultimately proved to be the decisive sector historically - and from comments on BGG, scenarios 4 and 1,2,3 all semeed to have major balance issues where the Allied numerical superiority is too overwhelming. The Germans win if they capture 2/3rds of Maleme, or exit units off the Eastern Board edge (representing them breaking through to get to the Cretan capital of Canea).  Pre-Drop Allied dispositions: On the left by the Airfield is the New Zealand 5th Brigade. Towards the east of the map is the New Zealand 4th Brigade. Both of these are front line and good quality allied formations - but they lack the heavy firepower support that would come to charactherise the Western Allied way of war. In between are some miscalleneous Greek units and rear Echelon troops (optimisticaly named New Zealand 10th Brigade). Finally, a few British rear echelon troops (in brown) are on the far eastern side of the map - they will later be reinforced with an understrength Battalion of Australians. In Scenario 5, the germans have to do the historical drop. They essentially have two regiments, Falschrimjager Regiment 3, and the Luftwaffe Strum Regiment.With hindset and knowledge of the Allied dispositions, there is no way a German player would voluntarily do this drop - the historical drop zones had III Battalion LLSR dropping right in the middle of the NZ 23rd Battalion. Even without AA this is a terrible idea - paratroopers are highly vulnerable when drifting down. The rest of the LLSR drop is a few kms west of Maleme Airfield, which is generally much safer; though can get hairy if the AA batteries on the airfield themslevs aren't suppressed (in retrospect, we definitely should have done this!) FJR3 also has half a battalion drop right in the middle of the NZ 4th Brigade, with the rest dropping around the Greek 6th and Greek 8th Regiments.. The Germans get some pretty horrific modifiers for landing in the middle of Allied firezones - and they lose several steps off the initial jump alone. In some ways, however, this drop did prove to be a bit of a blessing in disguise.  Post-drop situation: Scattered German formations trapped behind Allied lines. The Germans use their divisioanl activations to rally and form up to prepare to attack the Airfield, though FJR 3 are delayed in their advance on Canea and end up spending time assaulting the Greek 8th Regiment. The Allies don't get much to do this turn. 0900-1100 turns: Throughout the morning, the Allies spent a lot of time reducing the German sticks stuck deep within their brigade box. The Allied frontline infantry units (such as those of the 4th and 5th NZ Bdes) have purple fire ratings, which essentially allow them to fire for "free" during divisional activations (divisional activations are supposed to represent administrative functions - movement, resupply etc. so you can't do aynthing particularly aggressive during these). The 5th Brgade in particular throws a lot of men to reduce the remnants of German III/LLSR. This was partly to attrit away the qualitatively superior German troops while they were vulnerable ,but also because they were blocking the main West-East Road that the 5th NZ would need to reinfroce Maleme. Disastorously, however, the 5th Bde also decidd to withdraw one of the companies of the 22nd Battalion, on its far western flank, out east because it looked unnecessarily exposed to German fire. In retrospect, doing this made the German advance on Maleme much easier, because each unit projeucts a 1-hex firezone, and you can only enter an enemy firezone during a formation activation (which is, as above, expensive) or by spending a command point. The New Zealanders also got distracted by a secondary German force from LLSR advancing from the Southwest and redeployed units not tied up in the fight against the remants of III/LLSr there instead of against Maleme. The Germans manage to form up and are able to place down heavy fire on the Allied defenders of Maleme. The Eastern side is quieter thought the Allies whittle down some of the German paratroopers trapped behind their lines. However, another company escapes despite taking a step loss doing so.  End of the 1100 turn. 1300-1500 turns In the afternoon, the fighting in the West intensifies. The Allies get a little unlucky with their chit pulls and end up very low on command points. One thing you can do wit command points in GTS is to pass Troop Quality checks; the most important ones being ones that stop you from getting suppressed, or a surrender TQ check if your unit gets assaulted by an enemy unit An allied TQ of 5 generally means a good chance to pass (Roll a d10 under/equal your TQ, 0s are 0s), but Artillery, Cohesion hits and suppression can drastically reduce TQ - so my NZ Machine Gunners effective TQ was 1. I had run very low on CoPs at this point to try to buy Dispatch points to maintain an offensive tempo, and this allowed a unit from the LLSR to storm up Hill 107, overlookign the airfield, and disloding my defences (if he hadn't, It would be very difficult to advance a unit to 09.05 because that hex would be subject to allied fire from three sides). This was followed up with another assault on the Matildas I had brought up next to the Airfield that also succeded in getting the tank crews to surrender. This gave Tekopo control of the Western Half of Maleme Airfield. A single company for the NZ 22nd Bn was al that remained hodling the central bit of the airfield that he would need to bring reinforcements. By this time, 5th NZ Bde had finally cleared all but one of the roadblocks on the coast road and was marching its troops west The eastern sector remained relatively quiet, fighting wise. However, the British rear echeclon troops are finalyl able to activate and they make a flank march against FJR3's right flank.  1700-Night turns. The Germans keep hammering the lone Allied Company on Maleme Airfield, but, having driven off (with significant casualties) LLSR's flanking force from the Southwest, the rest of 22 Bn are able to start to move up to attack. Adidtionally, NZ 21st and 23rd Battalion finally clear off the last remnants of III/LLSr and are able to move west. Realising that their situation on the east was becoming perilousand that it would be very unlikely to be able to break through to the east, FJR3 decide to start withdrawing to the west to attack NZ 5th Bde's rear, with the British and Australians in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, The Allies get unlucky again on the 1700 turn and the 2nd NZ Division is paralysed by command indecision (GTS has a system where the last chit in the cup is played as the fisrt chit of the next turn instead - this is generally fine, but if it's a divisional activation can be disastorous - CoPs and DPs are usually only accumulated during Divisional activations, so going a turn without one puts you very behind). This resulted in a major German assault on the 1900 turn being able to force the surrender of the Allied defenders of Maleme airfield, just as much of NZ 5th Brigade was finally arriving to the key fight. We did pull the chits for the night turn where we did some manuevering (with 2nd NZ division being the last chit out of tht cut again), but decided to call it there with everything still to play for - the Germans have taken horrific losses, but have their precious airfield - but with only 4 infantry steps remaining on the western half of the map. If they could hang on until the afternoon, they can start bringing in Mountain troops. Additioanlly, the Germans were going into the second day with banks full of CoPs and DPs - which means their formations would get to do what they wanted, while the Allies CoPs and DPs for 2nd NZ Division were both very meagre, given the 3 turns of 0 points - CREFORCE had a lot of points, but few troops to use them with. FJR 3 was clearly going to be pivoting west to attack NZ 5th Bde's eastern flank, but they would have to extricate themselves from the Greeks, Australians and British first, and would have to fend off an attack of their own from 4th NZ Bde.  End of the 1900 turn. In all - we both enjoyed this. We both made loads of mistakes, some ending up quite historically flavoured (pulling troops away from Maleme Airfield, and getting distracted by mopping up paratroopers with NZ 23rd Battalion). We definitely got some rules worng ( I forgot the Greeks could actually be activated during an Allied divisional activation! which would have made them much more useful for just getting int he way and making the Germans burn up tempo and command points.). It does a good job of emphasising doctrinal differences between the two sides - e.g. the Allied infantry are happy firing away, whereas the Falschrimjager want to get in close and asault. We would absolutely both play this again - it does have a psuedo-operational sheen to it, and while there's a lot of criticism of the combat system being an exercise of fishing for 0s (for your rolls) or 9s (for your enemiess' rolls), a lot of the game is about maximising your chances by increasing the number of rolls you can do through the economical use of Command and Dispatch points. I would say the game is fiddly - units can have massive stacks of counters on them (when Maleme was finally taken, one of the allied companies on it had 4 markers - suppressed/cohesion hit/barrage/improved position), and it certainly doesn't help that the first turn of the game is domianted by the airborne drop rules that you never use again (admittedly there are secnarios that don't start with airborne drops, and this problem is a lot more pronounced in the Gold/Juno/Sword games). I think Tek went to an FLGS and bought himself a copy of Mercury today, which Iguess is a ringing endorsement (by Tek's standards). tomdidiot fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 21:34
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Yeah I really enjoyed the game so I was looking forward to trying it out by myself if I get the chance. I made a huge amount of mistakes: I needed to bring my troops much more quickly to the airfield for a start (column is very useful in that situation), as well as trying to keep the AA guns suppressed, since they are a menace. The LLSR got absolutely mauled, but that is pretty historical and it managed to get rid of a lot of enemy steps while at it. I really screwed up the tempo with the 3rd, though, I should have been much more aggressive at clearing the Greeks in my way. I realised later that I could have created a Kampfgruppe officer: this would have let me split the 3rd with one group doing a holding action against the rest of the British to the East while striking the Kiwis in the West: I think next time I would increase the tempo of operations to really put the New Zealanders in a much more difficult pickle, especially if I can threaten their exposed Artillery Parks. Overall, some lessons learnt.
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Jan 4, 2024 23:10
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I didn’t know there was an SA board wargame discord. I go through periods of being intensely interested in niche hobbies and usually cycle through the same 2 or 3 over and over again. I have been pulling out the Great Battles of the American Civil War game I bought 2 years ago and getting the itch to clip counters until my hands cramp up. Does anyone mind sharing the discord link with me?
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Jan 4, 2024 23:22
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Hekk posted:I didn’t know there was an SA board wargame discord. Same. Both to discord link request and eerily similar hobby styles
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Jan 4, 2024 23:43
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The discord is the SA Boardgoon one, but the wargames channel within it is pretty active, and has a lot of discussion in it about various games:
Tekopo fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 4, 2024 23:53
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Tekopo posted:The discord is the SA Boardgoon one, but the wargames channel within it is pretty active, and has a lot of discussion in it about various games: Thats a warthunder invite.
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Jan 5, 2024 01:01
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Thats a warthunder invite. Yeah, I already got that time sink; need the goon board/war game discord!
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Jan 5, 2024 01:29
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Yo, thanks for the lengthy write-up about your game -- I enjoyed reading it. Much appreciated!
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Jan 5, 2024 02:18
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https://discord.com/invite/vwNvBecBFa
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Jan 5, 2024 09:00
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How the gently caress did that happen? Sorry about that, think it was in my clipboard and didn’t double check
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Jan 5, 2024 09:45
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I bought Fading Glory ages ago, and been meaning to get my dad (who’s very impatient with rule explanations) to try it, and I’ve finally managed to get it played! The game is a multipack of the VPG Napoleon 20 games, which are 20 pieces or less games that take less than an hour to finish. They are quite random in terms of resolution but have a surprising amount of interesting decisions to make. The multipack features Smolensk 20, Borodino 20, Salamanca 20 and Waterloo 20. We opted to play the latter. At the end of the first day this was the position:  I got split and was generally on the retreat but had reinforcements coming, but needed to extricate the Prussians. The second day didn’t see much combat due to the rain and mud, but by the start of the third day we had set up in roughly historical lines along Waterloo and Waivre. The Anglo-Dutch got pushed off their line at Waterloo but a spirited attack by the Prussian were evening things up. The end saw us down to 1 morale each, and one combat by the Russians sealed the deal, giving the victory to the Allies. My dad asked me for another game so it’s a win in my book!
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Jan 12, 2024 21:30
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I'll be doing a narrative LP for the full campaign for GTS Operation Mercury sometime this weekend, so keep your eyes peeled. I'm going to solo it for convenience purposes, but the system has little to no fog of war.
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Jan 16, 2024 11:44
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I didn't see that DG had finally published their combined Axis Empires game. But holy lol $328?? I can buy the mega World in Flames for basically that and that comes with many times the content. Not to mention it's Decision Games so it's bound to have not been play tested and be full of typos and errata. Alas. Guess I'll have to track down an old copy of AE/DS to scratch the itch. It always filled such a great niche between WiF on the heavy side and Cataclysm or Unconditional Surrender on the accessible side.
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Jan 17, 2024 00:06
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Count Thrashula posted:I can buy the mega World in Flames for basically that and that comes with many times the content. Not to mention it's Decision Games so it's bound to have not been play tested and be full of typos and errata. It's actually quite good, it's been through three iterations and has been well-playtested.
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Jan 17, 2024 00:38
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Panzeh posted:It's actually quite good, it's been through three iterations and has been well-playtested. Oh that's awesome to hear actually! I guess it is sort of their flagship game.
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Jan 17, 2024 00:43
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Of all the grand strat games, I would say that the combat system and the way reinforcements are handled/built up in TK/DS is probably my favourite. I still have reservations about how fleets are handled (although I haven't tried SK), but overall the support system works really well. Although I like the combat system in USE, the support system is a chore, and the diplomatic levers in USE are a real chore. WIF to me feels like a very old design, although it is a much more open-ended game (at least from reading the LP of it).
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Jan 17, 2024 10:18
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Tekopo posted:Of all the grand strat games, I would say that the combat system and the way reinforcements are handled/built up in TK/DS is probably my favourite. I still have reservations about how fleets are handled (although I haven't tried SK), but overall the support system works really well. Although I like the combat system in USE, the support system is a chore, and the diplomatic levers in USE are a real chore. WIF to me feels like a very old design, although it is a much more open-ended game (at least from reading the LP of it). Part of the reason WiF is so open in Jobbo's game is because he's playing the pre-game module- in the base game it's more of a push. WiF allows for a more global approach to the conflict, but because TK/DS starts in '37 without a pre-war seperate game, there's more political maneuvering room. WiF (and to some extent AWAW) have a couple of big advantages in that they really do give you access to freeform unit construction, and they really do try to model the air/naval aspects of the war in some level of detail in a way TK/DS is mostly just trying to get at the effect of. They pay for this by being incredibly long games, WiF moreso than AWAW. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 13:35
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WiF is far more open but only if, as mentioned, you add the Days of Decisions "pack/game" to it. Its what adds the entire political layer. Factories in Flames makes production more rigid, but in a better way (originally, you would be able to produce units from anywhere and deploy them anywhere - which is suuuuper gamey) But I must agree that World in Flames feels very old, it is clunky with its rules, with many options, variants, or little addendums to rules being unhighlighted or hard to confirm. There is so much that could be improved, especially with how the game tries to include the world in its setting.
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Jan 17, 2024 15:35
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I think the issue with TK/DS in terms of production is that the production is very tied to the cards you play, so even if you have a variation on the cards, your production does not have a lot of variance game to game and you pretty much are given the same budget from game to game, and that budget is in no way tied to what you actually own/conquer within the world (although you will only get specific units by playing specific cards, but that's your unit pool, not your production). It makes things much easier and more streamlined but a lot more robotic.
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Jan 17, 2024 15:54
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It's also much more realistic though, conquering territory doesn't generally increase a country's productive capacity significantly in the short term - certainly not anything like how games with "production points" tend to represent it. That's one of the reasons I've often seen WIF get labeled a "Nazi Borg" game because the Germans seem to assimilate all their conquests into the hive mind immediately. I think there's an argument AE loses a lot of relevant detail around specific resources like oil but I still tend to find the overall effect more realistic than systems that track very specific production details and give you personal control over the entirety of a country's military procurement apparatus. Also, in a personal preference sense it's abstracting a decision that I don't find interesting (in my opinion most production systems tend to have an optimal way to run them and finding it is not a particularly interesting exercise nor is executing it once you've found it). This is also another reason I appreciate Downfall, you basically get your set replacement chits each season and you have to take a long operational pause to get them out to your armies and build them back up - when to take that pause is a potentially interesting decision and you don't have to get fiddly around determining exact numbers of people versus tanks versus planes versus submarines.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:09
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I think there some middle ground where assimilating other countries doesn't give you immediate construction advantages out of thin air, which you are right in that it's pretty ahistorical, but losing your own factoris materially impacts you in some ways. I struggle to remember how the Urals evacuation is handled within TK apart from having the cards represent that without reference to the ground situation.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:50
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To me, the advantage of production in games that feature it is the ability to change your force disposition from historical, as opposed to deep economic modeling. Now, Axis Empires does have some ways to choose your forcemix, like which demands you do as Germany, or which programs and expansions you pick as Japan. But it's within a limited band. There's ways to try to express most of the possibilities not taken in force disposition, but it's a menu of choices, and not a buffet like WiF or AWAW.
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Jan 17, 2024 19:58
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I've been playing GMT's US Civil War lately and I'm not quite sure if I like the game or not. When you get to push armies at each other it is fun and there's lot of strategic decisions to make about where and how you want to wage the war but goddamn it's a complicated game. I keep constantly re-checking the rules about how the naval control and supply works since both are so integral to everything and there are way too many exceptions and special rules for different map areas. I keep having this feeling that I could be playing For The People instead and having just as much fun with way less effort. edit: playing solitaire, I played one campaign game to mid-62 which went pretty historically in that the Union had a really hard time making any progress until Grant arrived and blew through the western theater. I had to take that game down but I started a new one today and played through turn 1 which saw a lot of very inconclusive fighting in Virginia while the Union took WV and CSA used a lot of APs just building fortifications since there's not that much to do before Kentucky opens. Obfuscation fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 20:59
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Obfuscation posted:I've been playing GMT's US Civil War lately and I'm not quite sure if I like the game or not. When you get to push armies at each other it is fun and there's lot of strategic decisions to make about where and how you want to wage the war but goddamn it's a complicated game. I keep constantly re-checking the rules about how the naval control and supply works since both are so integral to everything and there are way too many exceptions and special rules for different map areas. I keep having this feeling that I could be playing For The People instead and having just as much fun with way less effort. GMT's US Civil War is an adaptation of Victory Games' Civil war that tries to be less complicated but, imo, loses a lot to get there. As you say, by the time you're at USCW's level of complexity, you might as well play For the People because that's even more streamlined with very little further loss of depth.
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Jan 17, 2024 21:01
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GMT's USCW was a game I really wanted to love, because in my opinion is one of the top 5 prettiest maps of all time, and it has those really thick counters that feel great. The production was off the chart. But my god I couldn't even get through the whole rulebook to actually play the thing. It seemed so convoluted for no particular reason.
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Jan 17, 2024 21:39
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I played USCW I think once and I like it's modelling of lines of supply and the way that me and my opponent had to dance around each other, but my mind slid off every time I tried to read the naval/riverine rules and I never got a full handle on them. It's a game I really really wanted to like. I think honestly if I want to get an ACW fix nowadays I would just play GCACW instead, although I have other games on the conflict that I would like to get on the table. Currently I have stuff ranging from Martin Wallace Gettysburg, to Guns of Gettysburg (still to this day a game that I feel extremely conflicted on), For the People, Blue vs Grey (the entirely card based one? I think that's the name), None But Heroes (Line of Battle which I've yet to play once) and of course now the GCACW games.
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Jan 17, 2024 23:24
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Have any thoughts on GBACW? I have a punched and clipped copy of Into the Woods sitting on my shelf for the past couple of years that I’ve never gotten on the table. I know comparing tactical scale (GBACW) to operational (GCACW) is apples to oranges but I’m curious whether one might scratch a similar itch as the other since the focus is ACW for both. I understand that GCACW is extremely well regarded but it’s also fairly expensive. I don’t know that I am several hundreds of dollars interested in the series.
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Jan 17, 2024 23:30
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Never tried GBACW myself unfortunately. I am fairly sure we had someone either in the discord or in the thread that talked about it in the past though. Let me see what I can find.
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Jan 17, 2024 23:32
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GBACW is a totally different beast altogether, it's all about tactics and doesn't care about supply lines and stuff like that. However, it is a really good system if you like tactical games. It gives a great period feel of needing to worry about positioning and different weapon types and morale and stuff, and each game feels slightly different (I haven't played Into the Woods, but I know that there's a lot of cool stuff about forest fighting that you wouldn't get from, say, Antietam). All in all I recommend it, though it's been years since I've played so my memory is a bit hazy. Great time to get in though, since there's a new boxed game that contains a bunch of smaller scenarios (or maybe that's still on P500?)
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Jan 18, 2024 02:32
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I'm doing a narrative LP on a hex-n-counter for the invasion of crete if people are interested in checking it out.
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Jan 21, 2024 11:48
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Been enjoying GTS a lot: game is very solo-able and the VASSAL module for it makes life sooo much easier.
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Jan 26, 2024 20:49
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Tekopo posted:Been enjoying GTS a lot: game is very solo-able and the VASSAL module for it makes life sooo much easier. We definitely should scheulde a few games of it once I hand in my thesis.
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Jan 26, 2024 21:00
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Since I mostly complained about US Civil War in the last post, I'll need to note that my second game has been much more interesting now I that I'm better at the rules and can focus more on the gameplay. I still can't finish a turn in under an hour but I guess it's mostly because I'm playing solo so there's no one to hurry me up when I'm taking extended thinks. I just finished turn 6 which is summer 1862. At the end of turn 5, USA was 1 victory point away from losing the game since they hadn't managed to push into southern states anywhere besides WV and Lee invaded PA at the end of the turn and controlled Harrisburg for 2 VP. During turn 6, Grant finally managed to break into Tennesee and ended up taking Nashville and surrounding areas for a bunch of VP. Meanwhile Burnside was rampaging across Florida since CSA couldn't really afford to send any SPs there. In the east, there was a huge battle in PA where McClellan tried ejecting Lee from the north but rolled 3 on a 3d6 and lost pretty badly. Lee got around McClellans army by dipping south of Potomac and then doubling back to attack relatively undefended Washington(4 SP, level 3 fort and Butler). CSA rolled 5 on 2d6 while 6+ would have won the battle; then they got the iniative again, attacked again, and lost for the second time. As a reward for his stunning victories, Butler will be demoted at the start of turn 7 and replaced with Banks. Currently USA is 7 VPs above the loss threshold but they are not out of the woods yet, they need to make some progress on Mississippi but there's a whole lot of forts along it, they have not invaded Louisiana yet, Transmississipian theater is not making any progress and needs reinforcements asap... but at least they survived this turn.
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Jan 26, 2024 22:04
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I still have my copy of USCW because my first play experience was really evocative of the war, and I did enjoy it, but everyone that I've talked to has this rollercoaster opinion of the game because you look at the rules, you don't understand how half of them work, but then you play the game without worrying about the undecypherable bits and the base system is really solid and leads to interest events in the game. I enjoy the base rules more than FtP which feels very fixed to me in ways, and I think I'm overall over the whole "point-to-point" movement system anyway.
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Jan 29, 2024 14:39
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I ended the the USCW game in mid-63 since I was getting bit bored and also I've accumulated something of a backlog of games that I've bought but not played yet So, next on the table is GMT's Downfall. I haven't gotten too deep into it yet but I set up and played the start of the Overlord scenario and I'm very impressed by the game so far; there's a lot of very clever design going on here.
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Jan 29, 2024 20:44
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I really wanna see a proper AAR of Downfall (hint hint) because all I've seen of it so far has been really good stuff.
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Jan 29, 2024 20:53
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Hah, I'll think about it but don't hold your breath. I'm not good with words and getting good pictures of the physical board is annoyingly hard compared to Vassal.
Obfuscation fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jan 29, 2024 |
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Jan 29, 2024 21:31
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With how long Downfall takes you'll have to dust the physical board regularly for the pics, too.
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Jan 30, 2024 11:10
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 12:44 |
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shots fired!
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Jan 31, 2024 02:25
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